Nicolas Sarkozy has been lapping up the applause as the first outlines of his comeback strategy become clearer before European elections at which the far-Right National Front stands to make major gains, reports The Telegraph.
To receive a standing ovation at someone else’s rock concert is a surprising pleasure, especially when the singer is your wife, but to receive a chorus of applause every night is cause for celebration.
That, friends insist, is what is happening to Nicolas Sarkozy every time the former president not too discretely slips into concert halls around France to listen to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy half whisper her husky ballads to packed audiences.
“It has been repeated almost every night,” said Brice Hortefeux, his oldest friend, former interior minister and now in charge of his supporters’ club, Les Amis de Nicolas Sarkozy.
“He has accompanied his wife to places like Courbevoie, the Casino de Paris, and on Friday to Bordeaux, and each time when he arrives, the room gets on its feet to applaud him. It’s incredible.”
Mr Sarkozy, who has kept the country guessing over whether he plans to run in the 2017 presidential election, does not want the French to think he is enjoying himself too much.
Indeed, he has let it to be known that he is deeply concerned about the state of “suffering France” under the rudderless Socialist presidency of François Hollande, and the seemingly inexorable rise of the far-Right Front National.
But for a man who had to barricade himself into a Breton bar to avoid rampaging protesters during his re-election campaign, the apparent clamour for his return is music to his ears.
“It’s true that every time he moves about, people very warmly and spontaneously express their affection for the man and their desire for him to return to politics it touches him very deeply,” said Isabelle Balkany, a veteran politician from Mr Sarkozy’s former fiefdom of the Hauts-de-Seine, west of Paris, and part of his inner circle.
“I would remind you that for five years he was subjected to hateful attacks by the media not just regarding his politics but also as a man. Nobody unless they are Robocop finds that enjoyable.”
Chants of “Nicolas, Nicolas” and “Get out Hollande” are not all Mr Sarkozy has to smile about. He is basking in family life, spending time with his two-year old daughter Giulia and his supermodel-singer spouse.
“Carla is very intelligent and knows how to handle and protect him. She’s the one who told him not say anything definitive about leaving politics as she can see politics is his life,” said Catherine Nay, his biographer.
Politically, it is not every week that you are endorsed by your one-time sworn enemy and told that a large majority of France’s Right-wing electorate would rather see you run to reclaim your old job than anybody else.
Dominique de Villepin was Jacques Chirac’s last prime minister. He was also the man Mr Sarkozy famously once pledged to “hang on a butcher’s hook” over an alleged smear plot involving offshore Luxembourg bank accounts.
Yet Mr de Villepin has now announced he might even be prepared to back his erstwhile nemesis in a “spirit of unity”. “I think Sarkozy wants to come back and given the rising errors on the Left and Right there is a real opportunity for him,” he told Swiss TV.
“The French reflex is to seek a saviour and I think it’s always an error but the secret hope of the French is that someone shakes everything up and changes the game,” he added.
Mr de Villepin’s unexpected olive branch came shortly before an Ifop poll on Friday suggesting that a full 60 per cent of sympathisers of the opposition conservative UMP party would like to see Mr Sarkozy run for president again in 2017 — a country mile ahead of his nearest rival, Alain Juppé, the former prime minister, on 13 per cent.
François Fillon, Mr Sarkozy’s once loyal prime minister who believes he now has a rightful shot at France’s top job, mustered a paltry seven per cent, while the UMP’s current boss, Jean-François Copé, humiliatingly garnered just one per cent.
The pull to return may be strong, but Mr Sarkozy is officially steering clear of French politics for now — a pledge made when he lost his re-election race to Mr Hollande last year - to focus on the lucrative international conference circuit, on which he has bumped into his old friend Tony Blair several times.
“He is respecting his commitment not to get involved in national political life in the days, weeks, or perhaps months ahead - he told me so only an hour ago,” said Mr Hortefeux.
Be that as it may, he has made every effort to ensure he is not forgotten by sending, as Mr Hortefeux puts it, “postcards to the French” at regular intervals.
This month, for example, he returned to France’s parliament for the first time since his 2007 election to honour Jacques Chaban-Delmas, a former prime minister who in 1969 famously called for a “new society” to end a “blocked” nation. The parallel with a France on the verge of revolt over rising taxes and unemployment was clear.
Read more of this report from The Telegraph.